A Living Trust is Key if You’re the Family Breadwinner

Living trust attorneys can provide you with help making plans to provide for your family in case something should happen to you. It is important for everyone to make a plan to provide for their loved ones. However, if you are the family breadwinner and you have people who count on your income, it becomes even more important for you to put the right plans in place so your family does not experience a dramatic decline in their quality of life if something happens and you are no longer there to provide for them. There are legal tools that you can use to provide for your family and ensure that they don’t suffer financial hardship if you pass away or get sick, but you need to understand the necessary steps to take and you need to use the right legal tools.

Unsworth LaPlante, PLLC is here to help. We can evaluate your situation, discuss your goals, and assist you in determining the steps you need to take to provide for your heirs or beneficiaries if you pass away. You should give us a call as soon as possible so you can get your plans in place and have the peace of mind of knowing your family will be provided for. While every plan is personalized to your specific situation, one tool that is commonly part of an estate plan and incapacity plan for family breadwinners is a living trust.

Why a Living Trust Can be Important for Family Breadwinners

If you are a family breadwinner, your loved ones depend upon your income and your death could cause financial hardship. If you plan to provide an inheritance for your loved ones to help them to maintain their quality of life after you pass away, you want to ensure that you are protecting the assets that you intend to serve as an inheritance. You also want to make sure that the assets you intend to leave to provide for your loved ones can pass quickly on to them after you pass on.

A living trust can both help you to protect assets during your lifetime and can help you to facilitate the timely transfer of your wealth after you pass away. While a living trust may not provide protection from certain kinds of loss, it is still a valuable and powerful legal tool that you should consider making use of.

A living trust helps protect assets during your lifetime by making sure someone is able to manage your wealth in the event of your incapacity. If there is no one to manage your assets when something happens to you, the value of your assets could be reduced as there is a delay in someone being appointed by the court to take control. Your family will need to initiate guardianship or conservatorship proceedings and the court may not appoint a person who you believe would be the best guardian or conservator. If a guardian or conservator is appointed by the court who does not fully understand how to manage assets, losses could occur.

A living trust would allow you to ensure that a trustee of your choice can immediately take control over managing trust assets in the event that you should become incapacitated. While your wealth could still be vulnerable to being lost if you need to pay high nursing home care costs or high estate tax, your wealth would at least be somewhat protected through the creation of the living trust.

A living trust would also allow wealth to transfer through the trust administration process, which is a much faster process than the probate process. Since your assets could transfer more quickly to new owners, your heirs or beneficiaries would not have to wait to inherit the money or property that you intended to leave to provide for them if you were the breadwinner and your untimely death led to the loss of your income.

Getting Help from Living Trust Attorneys

Living trust attorneys can offer guidance to clients who are making plans to provide for their loved ones who depend upon their income. We can work with you to determine if trust creation is the right choice for you and can help you to create a legally valid trust document. To find out more about how our firm can help you, join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call at (802) 879-7133 or contact us online to at any time to put your personalized plans in place to provide for the people you love, even if the worst occurs and you are not there to take care of them on your own.

Ellen LaPlante is an attorney whose mission is to provide clients with guidance in Estate Planning, Elder Law, and Medicaid Preparation. She is barred in Vermont and New York. Ellen helps clients put together unique estate plans, including assistance with Trusts, Wills, Powers of Attorney, and Advance Directives. She also works with clients on Medicaid Planning and qualifying for Medicaid assistance.

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